


Ginsberg's War

by lanskyed



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Gen, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanskyed/pseuds/lanskyed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone asked me to write a fic about what would happen if Ginsberg got drafted into the Vietnam War. This is what came out. It starts from the time he gets drafted, and goes until he returns home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ginsberg's War

_“You are hereby ordered to report for induction into the United States Armed Forces on…”_

Stan stared at the crumpled, damp letter, and then looked back up at Ginsberg. “That’s two days from now,” he said. His voice was hushed.

“I don’t check my mail much,” Ginsberg said. There were dark circles under his eyes. His hands shook.

“You can’t go, man, you’re not going! You don’t agree with any of that stuff. You’ll find a way out of it. You’ll go to Canada, or something.”

There was no response. The office was quiet. Ginsberg reached out for his letter, and tucked it into his pocket.

* * *

They told him he wasn’t crazy. They told him he wasn’t physically ill. They told him they didn’t care that he was morally opposed to the war. They told him to shave, and they cut his hair, and they made him a medic. Then they handed him a gun.

“It’s not like the old days,” they said. “Medics carry guns now, too. They always shoot at medics first. You have to look like anyone else.”

He didn’t know how to fire a gun. He didn’t know how to tend a gunshot wound. They clapped him on the back, gave him a uniform, and told him they’d teach him both.

* * *

On the bottom bunk in the barracks, Ginsberg tossed and turned and dreamt about Canada. Stan had told him to go. He hadn’t. He should have.

It wasn’t all bad here. Everyone called him by his last name. Everyone called everyone by their last names, and everyone was just as scared as he was. He’d found that he could run fast, and they liked that. They praised him for being small and quick, and he wasn’t immune to their praise. He learned how to recognize five kinds of skin disease, how to make a tourniquet, how to dig a bullet out of someone.

He learned that his aim was still terrible. He was the worst shot some of them had ever seen.

Some guys sent postcards home, but he didn’t. They were still in the United States. Nobody wanted a postcard from Texas.

* * *

“Where’re you from, Doc?”

“Brooklyn. Where’re you from?”

“Cincinnati. How old are you?”

Ginsberg didn’t begrudge the questions. There was nothing else to do on the night watch. War was surprisingly boring. “Twenty four,” he finally said. It took some calculation. He shifted in his spot, trying to get comfortable, but the ground was all mud puddles and torn up grass anyway. Everything was perpetually wet. If he never had to see another infected mosquito bite, it’d be too soon.

They were silent again. He imagined, for a moment, that this guy was Stan. That they’d have a conversation about margarine or oatmeal or cars, that they’d stay up too late and Stan would get stoned. That they were in the office, high above Madison Avenue.

But his shoes and socks were soaked through, and Private Delcambre over there was no Stan.

* * *

It contradicted his basic human urges to run towards the sound of gunfire, but he did it over and over again. That’s why the guys called him Doc. He ran as fast as he could with that overburdened duffle bag. He dragged bleeding men back into safe positions, he splinted broken fingers and doled out pain meds for sprained ankles.

He still cried every time a guy died.

Private Delcambre stepped on a mine in an area that was supposed to be cleared. Before the smoke had cleared, Ginsberg was running towards the explosion. Private Delcambre was lying prone, and his right leg was missing from just above the knee.

“Doc,” he cried out, “I’m okay.”

The kid from Cincinatti was in shock. Ginsberg called for evac. He administered morphine. When the helicopter came, Ginsberg finally told Private Delcambre he’d lost a leg. “But,” he said, “you gained a permanent trip back home.”

Opinions on his bedside manner were hotly contested.

* * *

_Stan,_

_How’s things? I know that’s the kind of shit someone writes you from summer camp. Did you ever go to summer camp? I didn’t, because Morris was always suspicious of those places. I think he thought I’d get kidnapped. I bet sometimes he wished I would._

_I’ve been thinking about that airline campaign. Are you still working on it? Letters take awhile, and for all I know, you came up with the best idea of all time. I hope you did. If not, I storyboarded some stuff. Maybe you’ll like it._

_I can’t say I wish you were here. You’d hate it. I do miss you. Tell Peggy hi for me. Don’t tell Bob anything._

_\--Ginzo_

* * *

Time lost meaning. Hours stretched to weeks, but weeks contracted to days. He fired his gun at another human being for the first time. His aim was still bad, but it was good enough to kill.  They told him that he had to do it, that he would have gotten shot if he hadn’t, that he’d saved the lives of the two wounded men he was tending to when they were ambushed.

They didn’t give out medals for doing your job. They only gave them out for getting wounded, or for acts of heroism. He thought about shooting himself in the leg. He treated the wounds of a guy who’d done just that, and who had to be stitched up before he was flown off to be court martialed. He tried to decide whether dying in the jungle was better or worse than going to military prison.

He decided he was a coward. He decided to stay.

* * *

SCDP still had a job waiting for him when he came home. He took it, because he didn’t know how to do anything else, because he’d been born to advertise, because the only people he’d ever called friends were there.

On his first day back in the office, Don and Roger both shook his hand solemnly. Veterans, both of them. Now he was one of them. It made his skin crawl. Peggy smiled worriedly at him. Bob rushed to get him a cup of coffee. Things were as normal as they could be. People were the same. It wasn’t comforting. It was like things had gone on without him, and he was unmoored somewhere, still stuck 18 months in the past.

But Stan greeted him with a bear hug and all the office gossip, and the standing offer to get completely stoned any time he wanted, which, for once in his life, he felt like accepting. Stan sat with him at nine o’clock that night when he kept feeling the urge to hurl his typewriter out the window, when every loud noise outside made him jump, when he finally began to talk about everything that had happened.

And talked.

And talked.

He slept on the couch in the office that night. Stan slept on the floor. He didn’t know if he was really home yet, but he was closer.


End file.
